After 17 years in which he gave up two businesses, sealed two deals and developed Macromex to turnover worth 120m euros, Dan Minulescu says he will bet everything on a single card in the following years: frozen products distribution.
Minulescu, 42, developed from scratch the biggest distributor of frozen products, which last year reached 120m-euro turnover with 500 employees in Romania and another 30 in the Czech Republic.
In the first two years, Macromex's business was very simple, like most businesses in the early '90s. Initial investments stood at only 2,000 dollars, borrowed from friends as freight transport vehicles were rented.
In 2005, Macromex opened the first sales points in the country and then further developed counting on the same segment, which can still be considered a market niche: distribution at refrigerated goods. Minulescu says his best years as an entrepreneur were due to Romania's EU integration.
After 2007, the company followed two directions to develop its operations beyond Romanian borders: it started deliveries to clients on other markets and set up the first foreign subsidiary, in the Czech Republic. "2007 was our best year, in terms of profitability. The performance we reached then is still helping us now, when the market looks bad," Minulescu adds.
Instead, the toughest period for him was 1999, when the company was seriously hurt by RON decline and rising borrowing costs. Problems prompted Minulescu to start discussions, for the first time, with an investor interested in taking over Macromex. He says he does not regret not having attracted a financial investor in the company because under the control of a financial investor the company's flexibility would have been hurt. "(...) We're a sound company and we can raise more resources from banks than we need," Minulescu states.
Instead, he sealed two d
